Catharine Trotter Cockburn is best known for her Defence of Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding (1702). However very little has been said about Trotter’s treatment of Locke’s metaphysical commitments therein. In this paper I give a brief description of the history of Trotter’s Defence. Thereafter I focus on two (of the many) objections to which Trotter responds on Locke’s behalf: 1) the objection that Locke has not proved the soul immortal, and 2) the objection that Locke’s view leads to (...) the absurd consequence that our souls are in constant flux. I argue that Trotter offers a compelling response to both of these charges. This is not only because of what Trotter explicitly claims in the Defence, but also because the Defence invites and encourages the reader to return to Locke’s text. I then argue that in Trotter we find additional insights and clarifications once we move past the two objections I just mentioned, and on to the related topic of personal identity. In this short paper I am not be able to offer a full explication or evaluation of Trotter’s treatment of Locke’s metaphysical commitments. I am, however, able to show that this aspect of Trotter’s Defence warrants careful consideration and further study. (shrink)

Works of art are cognitive devices aimed at the production of rich cognitive effects. Thus it can be argued, in the light of what is known about human cognition, that aesthetic experience is a by-product of the exercise of more fundamental cognitive faculties such as perception and imagination. Works of art, on this view, are never grasped directly. Rather, in an aesthetic experience, a subject directly perceives a certain object or event (a canvas, a display of pixels, a series of (...) sounds), and this perception gives rise to a cognitive activity of a special, aesthetic type. Theories of art should thus address questions about the interplay of the cognitive faculties. Papers are invited on all aspects of the relation between perception, imagination, the emotions, and aesthetic experience, and on the way in which findings in cognitive science can shed new light on art, its appreciation, and its evaluation. (shrink)